Dave Gray, chairman and CEO of the renowned visual thinking consultancy XPLANE, is all about clarity. So it’s not surprising that he recently gave the clearest explanation I’ve ever heard of the key benefit of visual communications, captured in the simple flow diagram above.

Dave’s concise explanation makes a lot of sense to me. Here’s why. As human beings living in a post-modern era, we’re overwhelmed by the amount of communication coming at us. As a result, we’ve gotten into the habit of constantly filtering it, distilling it down to just the essential information we need to survive and thrive.

In business, if we don’t understand something, we’ll ignore it, or at the very least, refuse to make a decision about it. The sooner we understand, the sooner we can act on it. And that, simply put, drives results.

What’s been your experience?

P.S. I realized after I published this post that there’s a certain amount of (unintended) irony at work here: I’m using a visual communication technique – a process diagram – to explain the visual communication process Dave describes in the video interview.